universities in scotland

According to who?

A university that does not offer engineering degrees certainly is not the best for me. A university that does not offer law degrees certainly is not the best for people who want to study law.

So you can't say it's the best university in Scotland when for some students it is of no relevance.

Very good: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews

Good: Aberdeen, Strathclyde

Alright/good: Stirling, Dundee, Robert Gordon, Heriot-Watt

Also, after some reconsideration, I was a tad harsh on Strathclyde.

Not to mention Dundee and Stirling, which are certainly not on a level with the likes of Robert Gordon.

Glasgow excels over Strathclyde only in the subjects that Strathclyde doesn't offer - like the arts.

Strathclyde's Engineering, Science, Mathematics and Business school are all of greater repute than those at Glasgow.

And let's face it, these are the subjects that matter.

Hmm, no, definitely not bitter. I did my undergraduate degree at Glasgow, graduated in June, and actively choose to move to Strathclyde for my PhD.

Glasgow's research output in STEM is pretty awful, probably because they allocate too much resources to their arts and social science faculties.

Glasgow clearly does better than Strathclyde in Medicine and perhaps Law, but in general STEM Strathclyde trumps. That's why Strathclyde is getting a £93 million Innovation and Technology Centre, and Glasgow is getting... oh, nothing, just more debt, more cuts and ridiculous changes to its system from the new principal.

Not sure what you mean by apprenticeship type courses - could you elaborate on that with examples?

Additionally, Caloedonian is many leagues below both Glasgow and Strathclyde, so not sure why you're even bringing them up.

The Guardian league tables take into account ALL subjects, and like I've said you can't compare Glasgow to Strathclyde beause they have different specialisms. Strathclyde focusses on STEM, Glasgow focuses on Arts and Social Science.

Secondly, have a look at the criteria they use to judge Universities. Most of it is useless and irrelevant tosh.

For example, the average entry tariff doesn't demonstrate the difficulty, repute and rigour of the course, it demonstrates the ratio of applicants to places.

3 categories are based on the NSS survey which is obvious nonsense because any student will give their University a good rating, even if they hate it, because they know that their University's league table positions depends on their answer, and their University's league table position affects their career prospects.

The student:staff ratio is nonsense. Glasgow did have a lot of staff per student for my course, but 90% of the staff were utterly useless to me... so the quality of teaching and attention is not reflected there.

If you use league tables, you are an idiot.

The Guardian league tables take into account ALL subjects, and like I've said you can't compare Glasgow to Strathclyde beause they have different specialisms. Strathclyde focusses on STEM, Glasgow focuses on Arts and Social Science.

Secondly, have a look at the criteria they use to judge Universities. Most of it is useless and irrelevant tosh.

For example, the average entry tariff doesn't demonstrate the difficulty, repute and rigour of the course, it demonstrates the ratio of applicants to places.

3 categories are based on the NSS survey which is obvious nonsense because any student will give their University a good rating, even if they hate it, because they know that their University's league table positions depends on their answer, and their University's league table position affects their career prospects.

The student:staff ratio is nonsense. Glasgow did have a lot of staff per student for my course, but 90% of the staff were utterly useless to me... so the quality of teaching and attention is not reflected there.

If you use league tables, you are an idiot.

I've been through an Engineering degree at Glasgow. You telling me that my 4 year experience is worth less in terms of information than a fickle league table which changes dramatically year by year and uses indicators which are all but useless for the purpose?

Where's the statistics on research output and research quality? Where's the statistics on grants and research funding? Why is Strathclyde getting money thrown at it from all directions (new ITC centre worth £93 mil for example) while Glasgow faces cuts from all directions in order to sustain their Arts and Social Science courses?

Couldn't we just agree that both Strathclyde and Glasgow are great unis ?

Grade requirements are based on the ratio of number of applicants to number of places, NOT on the difficulty or rigour of the course in question.

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Grade requirements are based on the ratio of number of applicants to number of places, NOT on the difficulty or rigour of the course in question.

This is why Medicine has such high entry requirements - clearly medicine is nowhere near as technically difficult as, for example, Aeronautical Engineering. Yet the entry requirements are higher. The reason? Because more people apply to Medicine, so the admissions team need to raise the entry requirements in order to be able to disctinguish between the vast number of applicants.

Entry requirements are a poor indicator of quality... they're only an indicator of popularity.

Cant you search for stats? I know you go to an inferior uni but its really not that difficult

If Strathclyde is so awesome and all the league tables are biased, why are the grade requirements lower to get into strathy than glasgow?

Based on economics...

If Cambridge lost popularity, their entry requirements would go down to account for it, and if UWS gained popularity, the entry requirements would go up to account for it, all other factors staying the same.

Universities need to fill places to run at a profit. Oversubscribed courses have high entry requirements because of their limited resources for students, and undersubscribed courses have low entry requirements because of their wealth of resources in relation to their applicant numbers.

I've personally seen the entry requirements for my undergraduate course at the University of Glasgow drop year by year to account for decreasing applicants, despite the course itself not going through any changes whatsoever. I applied at AAAAC or AAAAB (one of the two, can't be sure), and the entry requirements last year were AABBC. Although this year they've gone back up to AAABB/AAAA.

Are you a retard?

Strathy doesnt do well in league table so theyre obviously not reliable and biased, it was inferior to Glasgow in the RAE 2008 so that is no longer valid nor does Strathclyde excel in entry requirements so theyre no longer an acceptable indicator ... can you see a pattern?

No, I'm not. Are you suggesting that Medicine is technically more difficult than Aeronautical Engineering, i.e. Rocket Science?

Barely anybody fails medical school once accepted, yet only one third of people starting Aeronautical Engineering at my University actually graduated, and only 2 of them with a first.

I never said the statistics were biased, I said they were based on trivial criteria. I could cobble together a criteria that puts Cambridge at the bottom and UWS at the top if I liked, but the league table wouldn't actually MEAN anything unless I could show that the criteria I was using were relevant to what was trying to be demonstrated.

The RAE shows barely any difference between Glasgow and Strathclyde (in fact, for Mechanical/Aerospace engineering they are identical), and 2008 was a LONG time a go, especially since we've been through a lot of economic turmoil in the higher education sector since then.

Things changed rapidly for Universities over the past 4 years as a result of the financial collapse, political change and reform of the education sector, so yes, I'm confident that any statistics that are 3 years old are almost entirely irrelevant owing to the fast-changing nature of the education sector in recent years.

Since then, Glasgow has suffered massive cuts to its budget, completely reformed its structure, had massive layoffs and voluntary severence packages for thousands of staff.

Whereas Strathclyde has gone from strength to strength, many of its research groups have shown themselves to be recession proof (particularly my own), and it's receiving countless investment boosts that you're just not seeing at Glasgow.